Elon Musk's tweets have once again sent bitcoin on a wild ride
Hong Kong (CNN Business) Elon Musk is once again giving a whiplash to the cryptocurrency market.
The CEO of Tesla (TSLA) is now saying that his company has not sold any bitcoins (XBT) after suggesting the opposite. His original Twitter exchange prompted Bitcoin to expand its losses.
The latest cryptocurrency drama began on Sunday when a user named Crypto Whale tweeted: “Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves in the next quarter when they find out that Tesla has given up its #bitcoin holdings.”
The user said, “I won’t blame @elonmusk as much as I hate it.”
Musk replied after about an hour: “Really.”
Within hours, bitcoin fell below $ 43,000, according to cryptocurrency tracker Coinbase, down more than 8% on the previous day. It had already lost some ground on Sunday, but the loss accelerated after Musk’s post.
Musk later posted a follow-up tweet, writing: “To clarify the speculation, Tesla has not sold any bitcoins.”
According to Coinbase, within five minutes of Musk’s tweet, the value of the digital currency immediately jumped 3.7% - from $ 42,566 to about $ 44,138.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its holding in the digital currency.
Musk’s post came just a few days after creating another stir last week, while announcing that Tesla would reverse plans to accept bitcoin as payment for its cars. He cited the high environmental cost of bitcoin as the reason for the move.
Musk said in a note posted on Twitter last Wednesday, “We are concerned about bitcoin mining and the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for transactions, especially coal, which would have had the worst emissions of any fuel is.” “Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but it may not come at a great cost to the environment.”
The environmental costs of mining – or creating – digital currencies have been well documented over the years.
The news sent bitcoin down around 12% at the time. This came months after Musk personally hyped up Bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies, such as Dogcoin.
Just before that, the CEO asked his followers in a Twitter poll whether he would like “Tesla to accept Doge.”
Tesla and Musk have shown considerable uptake on bitcoin for at least a few months, with the company revealing in February that it had invested $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin and floating its car buying capability using cryptocurrency Was. Musk tweeted in late March that people “can now buy Tesla with bitcoin.”
The company said in a regulatory filing last month, however, that it assesses each quarter whether “events or circumstances change ... It also revealed at the time that it had sold 10% of its bitcoin stake, making 101 There was a million dollar profit.
Last week, Musk said that Tesla still plans to use bitcoin after the currency found a clean energy source.
“Tesla will not sell any bitcoins and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy,” he wrote. “We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use less than 1% [of] Bitcoin’s energy / transactions.”
Musk’s other ventures have also joined the action. Last week, her space exploration company, SpaceX, claimed that she would take Dogcoin as a payment for an upcoming mission.